Villa PiJay

A letter sent from Bapak to anak-anak in KL - 8.6.2005

The weather around this kampong has just been fair and tolerable although sometimes it gets gloomy. The gloominess seems to be more set for us at home when schools have just closed for the next two weeks and as such we missed the real shrieks and shoutings of the kids around the house when Ju’s kids are not around. The kompang sessions seem to be “resting” until the schools reopen while my two classes adjourned for the “semester! But the sun and the rain have been kind to us when the vegetables at the backyard seem to be flourishing. We have been having a lot of greens from the vebetable plots with kacang panjang, brinjals, timun, petola and when Shima is around we seem to be ordering Shima Tempura from the kitchen more often! You should see the spread of green colour taintng the whole scenario when our jagung seems to be to flourish. In about two weeks we should be having jagung to boil or bubur jagung to enjoy. As usual Endit will start with Lemang Jagung with Rendang Tok!!Lahn is already cherishing the young shoots from the young jagung which he loves to nible on and I have seen him plucking the young shoots direct from the plants themselves without prior rebus or making sayur manis. Ohm and Shima were around this last week-end and I saw him carry back home to Ipoh an armful of the jagung and he got them after bribing Endit with two packets of her favourite Perilly.

One of the happiest occasions for me of late was when we have been able to pluck quite a few of the fruits from our 3-year old sour-sop plant. I have been counting the number we have on the tree due to ripen which number now I counted about 20! Looking at the success of the sour-sop plant I went out to the pasar-malam with Yah the other day and bought 10 plants of the sour sop tree seedlings to be planted at the other end our our fish-pond now that we have been having some regular rains good enough for a thriving young plants. Going to the Jaya Jusco super-market in Ipoh the other day we saw sour-sops selling at 45 cts a kilogram. Now after discussion with Alun (Lan’s close friend and pangkat anak-saudara to me) we may start a little project to plant sour-sops at my tiny kebun near Achik’s residence at Tembok and at Mak’s Dusun where we propose to plant in between the proposed kebun pisang (When are you people building up some interest in you Mak’s dusun which is now in the process of being transferred to you four!!) .Incidently although not in full-scale some 20 pisang found at this Paya Jerangau at this villa has been producing quite a surprising amount of bananas of the very edible and very palatable kinds (pisang emas,pisang rastali,pisang berangan etc) but how much can the three of us eat bananas every day? It is too little to sell them in bulk yet!!. And so it becomes a routinistic matter that we gave (sedekah?) of our bananas around the villa as far as Temok for Achik. The other day we collected some tandans of Pisang Tanduk from the plaintains each pisang tanduk measuring at ease one and half feet! We gave them out for free to all those during our “afternoon- meetings” belakang dapur rumah! Now,Lan has dubbed our Villa sarcstically as the Home for the Community!

About the fish-pond and its denizens it seems to be more than O.K. The regular Pegawai Perikanan who was always around giving us advice seems to be giving us the V sign every time and commented that the fish can already be “harvested”. There had been some comments before that much of the fish would die before they can be harvested .It did not deter us, We are very proud that the mortality rate was very small. Originally it was anticipated (by the Fishery Officer that 10% of the about 1,000 fries would. Recently, all told we believe only a very small margin died generally due the the reason ,we believe, that they are being over-fed, (by the budak-budak nakal!) We are at the moment deciding when we are going to harvest the ikan.. May be in two or three weeks time among our people around this villa not beyond. My only regret is it that not all my grand-children have even seen the pond yet. Oh Well!!

Finally the musim durian` is just starting…….to some but not to us or to your Mak;s dusun. I have had 2 or 3 of the very early (buang busuk) durians and I can say that the durian tembaga (on the bukit side) is class by itself. It is a pity that your Mak’s dusun was rather neglected. Lahn,Ohm.Ju nd Shima have all gone to see the dusun themslves all complaining, coming back, that the dusun has been neglected and ignored (Deep in my heart I cry!!!). It is so difficult to get really honest people to work nowadays. Even if they are around they have found for themselves dusun durians belonging to others on the normal win-win basis system as usual; Regarding your Mak’s dusun ,I feel, that at most we can get about 2 or less outings to the dusun if we bring along our friends and cronies to berkelah in the kampong as we used to do. For the future we need some dough to be injected for the dusun to be better developed and I know it can be done. I still believe that a musim durian occasion is still a moment of family get-together unless you are thoroughly convinced or still hold to it that durians are aplentiful and are easily available and cheaper in your towns and your locations then we can all forget any of the dusuns bereft by our ancestors for their anak cucu cicit.